About a month before Al Gore was elected Vice President in 1992, West Seattle Blogger Spouse and I shoehorned ourselves into an outdoor crowd at the UW to watch him speak. This was supposed to be some sort of appeal to Them Young Voters; what passed for local music royalty pre-grunge, the Wilson sisters, opened for him, as I recall.

I remember the sunshine and the energy. I don’t remember being terribly impressed by him. But Al Gore ’06 is a different guy. See for yourself in “An Inconvenient Truth,” aka “the Al Gore movie” or “the global-warming movie.” We just got back from shoehorning ourselves into an indoor crowd downtown to see it.

Cool thing is, it’s not what you’d expect. It’s not a huge scarefest full of “Day After Tomorrow” disaster-rama-style effects — it’s heartbreaking pictures, and impressive charts, and a whole different side of the ex-Vice President. Best thing, it ends with zillions of bits of advice on how you can do something about the problem. Chances are, here in our blue peninsula amid a blue city, you might be doing something good already. (Here at WSB World HQ, we’ve “planted trees. Lots of trees” and we “recycle” — abundantly — so now we just need to give City Light a call as per the credit-sequence exhortation and ask if they use “green energy.”)

Also advised, “tell everyone you know to see (the) movie.” So that’s what I’m doing here, with a link to Saturday showtimes, and a link to the tie-in site. If you’ve got an environmentalist bone in your body, it’s a lot more satisfying than, oh, say, “Over the Hedge.”